Thursday, 21 November 2013

The 2013 world chess championships are underway, and although I do not much follow chess, I noticed how they shared their winnings is markedly different than running. By comparison, running is more of a winner take all. But there is a spectrum of distributions filling out the middle.

Below is the money distribution for Chess. The ratio from first to 8th is 115/21 = 5.47. Even more generous is the first and second-place ratio of a mere 1.07.

The 1st/8th money ratio here is 150/7.4 = 20.2, and 1st/2nd ratio of 2. So in chess the runner up makes almost what the winner does, and 8th place make 18% of the winner, though not fantastic, compare to the runner-up for Boston who makes 50% while the 8th place makes only 5% of the winner. Boston is typical for running. For instance the ratios are similar to London, for which 2nd place makes 55% of the purse and 8th gets 7.3%.

But I wanted to see which, between chess and running, is more the outlier. That is, compared to other sports or competitions.

Here's the total distances below. At 34,000 km total I almost, but not quite, circled the earth (40,000 km). If I ran this same distance at a rate of 20 km/day it would have taken me 4.7 years to complete.

City 1

City 2

Distance (km)

Halifax.

London

4631

London

Mumbai,

7200

Mumbai,

Dhaka,

1891

Dhaka,

Mumbai,

1891

Mumbai,

Jaipur,

928

Jaipur,

Agra,

239

Agra,

Kanpur,

278

Kanpur,

Lucknow,

83

Lucknow,

Delhi,

414

Delhi,

Newark

11768

Newark

Halifax

968

Halifax

Sussex,

344

Sussex,

Fredericton,

118

Fredericton,

Sussex,

118

Sussex,

Halifax

344

Halifax

Toronto,

1265

Toronto,

Hamilton,

70

Hamilton,

Ottawa,

478

Ottawa,

Saint John

753

Saint John

Halifax.

206

TOTAL

33987

This was all pretty random, that's for sure. It'd take a while to explain all of it, but it include work, vacation, visitation and death. Opinions and whatnot, I'm sure there will be time eventually.